2009 – Page 4 – American Alliance of Museums

Call for Papers: Involving Users in the Co-creation of Digital Knowledge

By Elizabeth Merritt

One of the trends being explored by CFM is the rising expectation on the part of users that museums provide avenues for them to contribute their opinions and expertise—to be co-creators, not just consumers. Some museums are harnessing …
Got Game? Another Opportunity for Museum Partners

By Elizabeth Merritt

CFM’s inaugural lecturer, Dr. Jane McGonigal, lobbed “brain grenades” at the museum field last December, challenging us to apply the principles of game design to museum practice. Why wouldn’t museums want part of the “heart-share and …
Oh Brave New Virtual World!—Explorers Wanted

By Elizabeth Merritt

Museum practitioners are energized, perturbed, or both by the prospect of a future in which people spend more and more of their time immersed in virtual worlds. After all, the virtual is the enemy of the real, right? Some counter that a …
Toward Multi-Museum Multi-Media Collaboration (in the IMMEDIATE future!)

By Bruce A. Falk

Guest post by Bruce A. Falk, Contracting Officer, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Imagine a paleontology team on a dig. The lead scientist narrates a video capture summarizing the day’s finds, which is then posted to a vlog (web-based …
The Upside to Cutting Down

By Joelle Seligson

This article originally appeared in the September/October 2009 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of AAM membership. Thirty percent of staff eliminated. Endowments evaporated overnight. Opening hours shortened. Operating budgets …
The Mall Over the Museum

By Susie Wilkening

This article originally appeared in the September/October 2009 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of AAM membership. “We’ve outgrown museums,” the girl said. Behind her, heads nodded in agreement. Were these 13-year-olds trying to say …
Please Touch the Objects: The Future of Museum Accessibility

By Elizabeth Merritt

CFM Council Member Day Al-Mohamed and I recently led a forecasting session at the Leadership and Excellence in Accessible Design Conference at the Kennedy Center. (An earlier post on the CFM blog solicited your input for this session. …
Crowdsource the Museum?

By Elizabeth Merritt

I got hooked by the title of this blog post–Get Ready to Participate: Crowdsourcing and Governance—energized by a momentary leap of hope that it was going to be about nonprofit governance. It’s not, but it’s still really interesting. …
More News from the Future–Today

By Elizabeth Merritt

Next in our series of “tomorrow’s news today”—this article from the New York Times about the National Geographic Society’s archives plan to sell its original black and white prints, and, later color photographs. While the initial sale …
Sneak Preview of a New Museum Game

By John Maccabee

CFM has from its inception has explored what museums can learn from games, and game design. In this guest post, John Maccabee, of San Francisco based CityMystery, gives readers an early glimpse into the creation of a new, multi-museum …